In view of the Italian Presidency of the Group of Seven (G7) in 2017, the Istituto Affari Internazionali (IAI) conducted a research project on “Major Challenges for Global Macroeconomic Stability and the Role of the G7” together with a major policy think tank in each of the other G7 member countries: Center for International Governance Innovation (CIGI, Canada); Centre d’Etudes Prospectives et d’Information Internationales (CEPII, France); Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW, Germany); Japan Institute for International Affairs (JIIA, Japan); Royal Institute for International Affairs (Chatham House, United Kingdom); Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE, United States).The project covered the following three subjects, representing major challenges for G7 policy-makers: macroeconomic policy coordination; international trade relations; global financial stability. Each participating think tank prepared a paper addressing all or some of the issues from the perspective of its own country, outlining areas of possible consensus for joint actions to be achieved within the Group and offering independent policy recommendations for the G7 deliberations. The seven papers have been presented at an international conference held in Rome on 27-28 March 2017 and have been discussed by a broad range of experts from academia and international institutions. The proceedings of the conference are presented in this volume.
A broad consensus emerged from the T7 papers and the contributions of the discussants on the need to reduce policy uncertainty, preventing a resurgence of financial tensions in capital and foreign exchange markets. Boosting public investment in infrastructures and new technologies; defining a “better trade agenda” with adequate social protections and completing the financial regulatory reform were also indicated as top priorities for the G7.

Fabrizio Saccomanni, current IAI Vice President, was Minister of Economy and Finance in the Letta government from 28 April 2013 to 22 February 2014 and former Director General of the Bank of Italy.Simone Romano is Research Fellow in the International political economy programme at the Istituto Affari Internazionali (IAI) and Visiting Professor at the Freie Universität in Berlin.

The Mediterranean is a highly interconnected geopolitical space in which instability, conflict and insecurity have increased dramatically in the last few years. Today, Mediterranean security is even more central to the national interests of Italy, and therefore requires a continuous, systematic and in-depth reflection by the country’s elites and public opinion. The book aims to contribute to this reflection by addressing the issue with a comprehensive and pragmatic approach. The first chapter analyses the “arc of crisis” in the Arab world, linking current instability and conflicts to the socio-economic, religious, political and geopolitical dynamics. The second chapter focuses on the Mediterranean Sea – from the Italian perspective – in terms of trade between littoral states, maritime traffic, and the “blue economy.” The third chapter focuses on the energy-producing North African countries, the Mediterranean offshore fields and European energy policies in this region (with a view not only to energy security). The fourth chapter analyses the positions of NATO and its major member states with respect to Mediterranean security, with a specific focus on the Alliance’s maritime strategy. The fifth chapter discusses the recent EU Maritime Security Strategy relation with the Mediterranean. Finally, the sixth chapter looks at the “Euro-Mediterranean region” from the Italian perspective, a region that is the priority area for use of the military, including its naval component, as evidenced by the series of naval operations conducted in recent years to respond to the migration crisis.

Alessandro Marrone is Senior Fellow in the Security and Defence Programme at the Istituto Affari Internazionali (IAI).

Michele Nones is Scientific Advisor of the Security and Defence Programme at the Istituto Affari Internazionali (IAI).

Technological innovation and the military have always been in a state of constant interaction, fostered especially during the post-Cold War period. In this context, the present study focuses on the relationship of Italian, American, British, French and German Armed Forces with Information Communication Technology (ICT). The aim is to analyse in a Euro-Atlantic perspective the path undertaken by the Italian Army to develop Network Enabled Capabilities (NEC) through the “Forza NEC” Program. The acronym NEC refers to the interconnection of different elements of the Armed Forces in a single broad network, making them interact in order to achieve a strategic superiority. The book is composed of three chapters, which offer respectively an analysis of the American case, an overview of recent developments in France, Germany and the UK, and a discussion of the situation in Italy. The volume – which comes four years after the IAI publication The Transformation of Armed Forces: The Forza NEC Program – aims at analysing state of the art of the evolving relationship between technological innovation and the Armed Forces. This evolution is hindered by the fact that efforts to digitize and interconnect land forces and their equipment by using ICT sometimes clash with both operational difficulties and budget constraints. Such a clash poses challenges and roadblocks on the way towards NEC undertaken by the Armed Forces of the countries discussed in this book.

This volume has been written by leading scholars within the New-Med Research Network with the aim to foster both the academic and the policy debate on the changing migratory scenarios in and around the Mediterranean. It looks at the evolution of human mobility towards Mediterranean Europe over the past decades and analyses the historical, demographic, social, psycho-social, economic, and political dimensions of these phenomena. The concluding chapters assess the role of the EU and advances proposals for a long-term European migration policy.

Lorenzo Kamel is Associate Fellow at the Istituto Affari Internazionali (IAI) and Research Fellow at Harvard University’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies (CMES).

Africa is experiencing one of the greatest transformations of its history. Today’s Sub-Saharan Africa is still marked by enduring instability, mass migrations and crises, but at the same time it is also characterised by positive developments including economic growth and regional integration. This publication sheds light on these changes from three perspectives: economic policies and sustainable development; good governance and democracy; peace and security. Research in relevant regions in Sub-Saharan Africa and key countries (Ethiopia, Mozambique, Nigeria and South Africa) has been conducted by African and European experts with the aim of assessing the role of the private sector and determining the partner-ship opportunities that could potentially be developed with the public sector. A series of policy recommendations are offered to the European Union on how to tackle these opportunities in cooperation with old and new actors.

Marta Martinelli is Senior Policy Analyst at the Open Society European Policy Institute.

In the current debate on military capabilities and defence industry, the term “dual-use” means those technologies that can be used to develop systems and equipment for both civilian and military purposes. Changes occurred in modes of technological innovation have brought about a growing interconnection between the civilian, security and defence sectors, especially from an industrial point of view. In this context, “dual-use helicopters” refer to platforms that have been designed in compliance with certain standards and are structurally built so that they can satisfy civilian, military or security users with only minimal adjustments or additions. This volume analyses the use of helicopters by armed forces, law enforcement agencies and emergency services, in three countries: Italy, France and the United Kingdom. Such landscape is diversified and fragmented, with different approaches and above all helicopter fleets made up of diverse platforms of subsequent generations – some with more than 30 years of life cycle behind them. In all three countries, national defence budget’s restrictions have demanded more efficient solutions for the necessary fleet renewal and management in the medium term – a renewal often coupled with a quantitative reduction. In this respect, the option of a dual-use helicopter becomes interesting in that it ensures greater security, effectiveness and efficiency in use by armed forces. This calls for a common and in-depth reflection on the problem by all actors in the defence and security field.

Alessandro Marrone is Senior Fellow in the Security and Defence Programme at the Istituto Affari Internazionali (IAI).

Michele Nones is Director of the Security and Defence Programme at the IAI.

Global Turkey in Europe’s third volume sheds light on four key areas in EU-Turkey relations: foreign relations, democracy, the Kurdish question, and economic and trade issues. Building on its two preceding collective volumes, Global Turkey in Europe III intends to contribute to a comprehensive discussion on shaping a common Turkish-European future with an eye to key domestic, regional, and global challenges and opportunities facing both the EU and Turkey.

Senem Aydın-Düzgit is Assistant Professor at Istanbul Bilgi University and Senior Research Affiliate of the Istanbul Policy Centre (IPC).

Daniela Huber is Senior Fellow in the Mediterranean and Middle East Programme at the Istituto Affari Internazionali (IAI) in Rome.

Meltem Müftüler-Baç is Professor of International Relations and Jean Monnet Chair at Sabancı University, Istanbul.

Emin Fuat Keyman is Director of the Istanbul Policy Center (IPC) and Professor at Sabancı University.

Michael Schwarz is Ex ecutive Director of Stiftung Mercator and heads the International Affairs Division.

Nathalie Tocci is Deputy Director of the Istituto Affari Internazionali (IAI), Rome and Special Advisor to the EU High R epresentative.

In light of Russia’s annexation of Crimea and destabilization of Ukraine, West-Russia relations have so dramatically deteriorated that talk of a new Cold War has become routine. NATO’s role in Europe is again in the spotlight, with experts and policymakers pondering whether the Alliance needs to go back to its historical roots and re-calibrate itself as an instrument of defence from and containment of Russia. At the same time, cooperation between Russia and the West has not collapsed altogether coordinate on issues such as Iran’s nuclear programme. Clearly, tensions over Ukraine are so strong that the risk of a breakdown in relations cannot be ruled out. The contributions to this volume, the result of an international conference jointly organized by the Istituto Affari Internazionali and the Center on the United States and Europe at Brookings, analyze the dramatic shift in Europe’s strategic context and explore the question of whether Russia and the West can contain tensions, manage competition, and keep cooperating on issues of mutual concern.

RICCARDO ALCARO is Senior Fellow in the Transatlantic Programme, and Project Manager of the Transatlantic Security Symposium, Istituto Affari Internazionali (IAI). In 2014 he was a Visiting Fellow at the Center on the United States and Europe (CUSE) of the Brookings Institution, Washington.

The book shows that the overcoming of the negative imbalances in the current accounts of the large majority of peripheral Member States in the euro area is mainly due to a recession-driven decrease in import, a monetary wage compression, and below average rates of inflation. This re-equilibrating process thus leads to short-term adjustments, in the sense that it is unable to structurally fill the competitive gaps accumulated inside the euro area during the first decade of its life (1999-2007), owing to the inefficient allocation of the financial flows coming from the European central countries and invested in the European peripheral countries. Contrary to the predictions of the standard macroeconomic models based on the “catching up” mechanism, these financial flows did not adequately foster the productivity of lagged Member States in the euro area.
Our proposal is to replace the “invisible hand” of the market with the “visible hand” of a European policy project. We argue that an effective policy initiative would have to combine a programme of European public and private investments with “contractual arrangements” aimed at implementing crucial national reforms. This strategy might provide a short term positive demand shock as well as the long term strengthening of the structural competitiveness of the peripheral Member States without involving direct financial transfers but allowing an intergovernmental co-operation and a trust-building process under the control of the European institutions.

Marcello Messori is Professor of Economics at the Department of Political Science, LUISS Guido Carli (Rome) and Director of the LUISS School of European Political Economy (SEP).

Italian combat aircraft have played an increasing important role in the international missions in which Italy has participated in the post-Cold War era – from the First Gulf War to Libya, including Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo and Afghanistan. This participation has been a significant tool of Italy’s defense policy, and therefore of its foreign policy towards crisis areas relevant to its national interests (from the Western Balkans to the Mediterranean), as well as towards its most important allies within NATO and the EU. This IAI publication analyses the role of these military capabilities in recent operations and their prospects for the future. In fact, a number of trends can be inferred from the operational experience in ten international missions, in which Italy deployed more than 100 combat aircraft in more than 13,000 sorties, clocking up 36,000 flight hours. These trends are considered in light of the recent developments in the doctrine of Air Power, as well as possible future scenarios for the use of combat aircraft in crisis theaters. The aim of the analysis is to understand the needs of the Italian Armed Forces – the Air Force and Navy in particular – which will have to replace a substantial portion of their current combat fleets in the near future due to the gradual obsolescence of the aircraft in service – an operational necessity linked to the inevitable political decisions regarding the options available in the field of military procurement for maintaining the capabilities required so far for international missions. In this context, the study looks into the acquisition of F-35 aircraft, also considering the industrial aspects of a multinational program that will produce more than 3,000 units for over 12 countries.

Vincenzo Camporini is Vice President of IAI

Tommaso De Zan was intern in the Security and Defence Programme at IAI

Alessandro Marrone is Researcher in the Security and Defence Programme at IAI

Michele Nones is Head of the Security and Defence Programme at IAI

Alessandro R. Ungaro is Research Assistant in the Security and Defence Programme at IAI